What essential items should you carry for Mountain Biking?. The list can be quite long, but here I’d like to trim down to 10 as a must have. Let’s check out what they are:
1. Water
Hydration for body is very important and you must stay hydrated! Mountain biking can be a tough sport and when it comes quenching your thirst, water is your first resort. It’s the healthiest drink out there.
2. Helmet
In mountain biking, head protection is vital. You need a helmet when biking, not just mountain biking but in any type of biking wearing a helmet should be your first piece of gear that you buy. However, in mountain biking, since one is exposed to many threats (trees, rocks, dangerous terrain and etc.) it is even more important to wear a helmet. It saved me a number of times from getting hurt by tree branches through my rides, so highly recommended and a must have gear to wear.
3. Protective Gear
A helmet in biking is pretty important but when you are mountain biking, protective gear is your best friend. You really want to be sure to protect your knees, elbows and wear long socks to avoid scratches and cuts on your legs. This is not a “must” but it’s good to have that extra bit of safety before approaching any type of dangerous activity.
4. Carry a Cell Phone
And Injury can be hard to deal with especially when you have nothing that can help you or another person, that’s why important to have a phone so you can be able to call an emergency line or even your relatives who might know where you are and be able to help you.
5. First Aid-kit
If you don’t have a cellphone, a first aid-kit might just be able to do the job. It should carry bandages, gauze, tweezers, disposable gloves, alcohol-free cleansing wipes, medicine, skin rash cream, thermometer, scissors, hand sanitizer, tissues and many more things that could help you in a dangerous situation.
6. Food & Snacks
Keeping yourself hydrates is good, but let’s be honest… just water isn’t gonna cut it. You need to have food with you especially when mountain biking, it is possible that a hunger attack hits you and you all of a sudden feel week. Your body needs energy! Therefore, you should take a couple of snacks with you mostly: granola bars, cookies, juice, banana’s, sandwiches, nuts and etc. Be creative take things that you think you and others (if your riding with others) would enjoy on the trail.
7. Bike Patch-kit
Patch-kits are necessary for biking. Bust a tire? Use the patch-kit. Tangle up the chains? Use the patch-kit. Patch-kits are great and useful for rough terrains that mountain bikes go on. However, if you do find yourself constantly having to repair your mountain bike, try to look and buy another one. After all Mountain bikes are made for mountains, so they shouldn’t bust a wheel every few rides or so. While it’s seems obvious but never ever forget to carry a hand-pump in your tool-kit to inflate the tire.
8. Headlights
Biking in general can be a fun activity, but what if you want to bike at night? To bike at night, make sure you got a headlight! This is really important and can even save lives. You have to have some way to notify or alert people by some signal, and the standard way of telling someone your coming there way or even from behind them is to have a headlight. Pedestrians can be warned ahead and they will get out of your way.
9. Bells and Whistles
Yes and it’s super cool as the name sounds, you have to have them :).
Just like headlights but bells are the more generic way of letting people know your biking their way. Bells are also used at any time of the day where headlights are specifically made for night time.
10. Backpack
There is a lot of stuff in this list and you have to have some way to carry all of it right? Simple solution: Carry a backpack!
A wide verity of backpacks are available to purchase, what you really are looking into is a light weight yet sturdy enough to carry with you through the biking trails for many enjoyable rides to come.
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